China's Green Finance – Key Recent Developments

“Green finance” is quickly gaining momentum in China. The rise of green finance was at first driven by environmental goals when the concept of “ecological civilisation” was brought up, and more recently by China's objectives to achieve the peak of carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality (or more precisely, net-zero of all six types of greenhouse gas emissions) by 2060, the so-called “Dual Carbon goals”.

According to research conducted by Tsinghua University, Goldman Sachs, China International Capital Corporation and Green Finance Committee of China Society for Finance and Banking, between RMB 100 trillion and 500 trillion green finance will be needed in the coming 30 to 40 years to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.¹ This will inevitably require a robust financial system to encourage, facilitate and direct finance into these areas.